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de Vaujany, F.X. and Aroles, J. (2019) 'Nothing happened, something happened : silence in a makerspace.',Management learning., 50 (2). pp. 208-225.

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de Vaujany, F.X. Aroles, J. (2019). Nothing happened, something happened: Silence in a makerspace. ManagementLearning 50(2): 208-225. Copyright c© 2018 The Author(s). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.

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1

Nothing happened, something happened: Silence in a makerspace

François-Xavier de Vaujany1* and Jeremy Aroles2

1Université Paris-Dauphine, Place du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, 75016 Paris. Email

address: devaujany@dauphine.fr

2Durham University Business School, Mill Hill Lane, Durham DH1 3LB, UK. Email address:

Jeremy.aroles@durham.ac.uk

* Corresponding author

Abstract: An ever-increasing range of work activities occur in open spaces that require

collective discipline, with silence emerging as a key feature of such workplace configurations.

Drawing from an ethnographic examination of a makerspace in Paris, we explore the ways in

which silence is incorporated into new work practices in the context of their actualization,

embodiment and apprenticeship. Through its engagement with the conceptual work of Merleau-

Ponty, this paper does not posit silence as the opposite of sounds or as a passive achievement.

Silence is inscribed in a learning process and requires numerous efforts to be maintained (e.g.

body postures to avoid staring into the eyes of someone entering into an open space, wearing

headphones, etc.). It is also the envelope of numerous noisy acts that take place in the

phenomenological body and in the embodied practices of workers. We argue that ‘silencing’ is

an event ordering and giving directions to what ‘happens’ in collective work activities and

central to the process of embodied learning in collaborative spaces.

Keywords: Silence; Learning; Embodiment; Visibility; Merleau-Ponty; Makerspace; Work

Practices

2

Introduction: Nothing happened, something happened…

Paris, 10 a.m.

I have been in this coworking space for an hour now. Sitting here with my laptop, looking for

the right position. Still not sure how to sit in order to feel comfortable. Everyone is working in

the main room where I’ve been offered to work on my laptop. The atmosphere is friendly and

relaxed. Close to me is a big sofa where a girl is cutting several pictures. Not far from me is a

telephone booth in which one can isolate oneself. Much work has been done to ensure everyone

can create their own bubble! My phone suddenly rings. The ringtone is my favourite song by

Sinatra. But where is my phone? Is it in my jacket? I cannot find it. Some coworkers start

looking at me. It seems that I’m breaking something. Where is my phone? I decide to leave the

room, desperately looking for a way out… Not that easy as the main room is really large. The

minute I’m out, I find my phone…

This short extract from our field notes draws our attention onto the importance of silence

in collaborative spaces (i.e. coworking spaces, makerspaces, fab labs and hackerspaces). These

spaces, which have been blossoming since the early 2000s (de Vaujany et al., 2018a; Hatch,

2014; Lallement, 2015), are expected to favour both horizontal (i.e. between those working in

that place) and open collaborations (i.e. beyond the immediate involvement in an open space).

Work, in general, is seen to become increasingly more collaborative in the context of the rise

of the sharing economy (Bouncken and Reuschl, 2018; Sundararajan, 2017). Collaborative

spaces are aligned with the logic of greater work flexibility and autonomy (Felstead et al., 2005)

and can be seen as the material manifestation of ‘new ways of working’ (Bohas et al., 2018).

These spaces are similar to third places (Oldenburg, 1989) and their location between home and

traditional workplaces contributes to the blurring of the boundary between private and work

3

life (Golden and Geisler, 2007; Gregg, 2011; Sayah, 2013; Tietze and Musson, 2002). In these

new work configurations, workers are in a quiet environment and expected to often remain

silent, to use silent tools and to produce entities that are invisible for those just crossing the

space and experiencing it ‘from the outside’.

Various authors have highlighted the surprising lack of research on the notion of silence

in management and organisation studies (see for instance Bigo, 2018; Blackman and Sadler-

Smith, 2009; Kirrane et al., 2017; Morrison and Milliken, 2003). A significant proportion of

the existing literature has investigated the coercive dimension of silence (i.e. ‘being silenced’)

(see Brown and Coupland, 2005 or Costas and Grey, 2014), with some papers, for instance,

exploring how race or gender are silenced in organisations (e.g. Macalpine and Marsh, 2005).

Van Dyne et al. (2003) distinguish between three types of silence in organisations: acquiescent,

defensive and prosocial. While problematic in that it sets to establish discrete types of silence

(Fletcher and Watson, 2007), this approach extends beyond the conceptualization of silence as

the opposite of voice, noise or speech in a coercive context. Closer to our concerns are

researchers who have argued that being silent or silenced in organizational settings is not only

a power-invested process, but is linked to various organizational practices (Brinsfield, 2014;

Grint, 2010) and forms of expression in organizational debates (Kirrane et al., 2017), and

importantly has ramifications and implications for knowing, learning and organising (Blackman

and Sadler-Smith, 2009).

This paper sets to take this last point further by engaging with the notion of silence

through Merleau-Ponty’s (1945, 1964, 2010) writings, with a particular focus on the concepts

of visible and invisible. The paper is concerned with the ways in which silence is incorporated

into new work practices, with regards to how these are actualized, embodied and apprenticed

through everyday practice. For Merleau-Ponty (1945, 2010), silence is not a passivity, a

discontinuity or an invisibility. Silence requires numerous efforts to be maintained and is also

4

the envelope of miscellaneous noisy acts that take place in the phenomenological body and

through the embodied practices of workers. For Merleau-Ponty, silence is ‘not the mere absence

of sound or simply an opposite to language’, but ‘its other side’ that makes meaningful

expression possible (Mazis, 2016: xiii). It constitutes both a rhythm of work and a temporal

orientation for collective work.

We explored the role played by silence in new work configurations primarily through

an ethnographic inquiry in a makerspace in Paris. A range of visits to various collaborative

spaces (located in nine different countries) also informed our research, as they allowed us to

experience different modalities of collaborative work. Collaborative spaces provide ideal

settings for the study of the complex relationship between silence and new ways of working.

They include quiet areas for collective work (open spaces), provide a shared space partly

governed by rules of silence and elaborate particular modes of animation based on silence.

Through our empirical research, we identified specific visibility-invisibility, continuity-

discontinuity and passivity-activity loops. These loops prompt us to see ‘silencing’ as a major

event in Merleau-Ponty’s (2010) sense, an happening inside happenings, something underlying,

ordering and giving directions to what ‘happens’ in collective work activities.

Positioning silence as a meaningful phenomenon pregnant with possibilities (Bigo,

2018), these loops also allow us to reflect on how silence redefines how learning can be

conceptualised (Blackman and Sadler-Smith, 2009) in the context of collaborative spaces such

as coworking spaces and makerspaces. We argue that silence can be seen to create the

conditions of ‘co-created situated learning’ (Butcher, 2018). Silence gives visibility to the

learning process of the workers: they will be able to feel both the past and the future of their

skills in the present. Paradoxically, silence is a discontinuity that makes visible what is at stake

or should be at stake in everyday activities. It re-centres expression around gestures as well as

focused and spared conversations, and is sometimes extended by digital silence (disconnection),

5

which makes obvious the fact that a silence ‘immediately felt’ in a physical space is not

necessarily an absence of conversation. We contend that Merleau-Ponty’s work offers a

fascinating angle through which to explore the complex relation between silence and learning

in the context of the embodied practices of workers engaged in new work configurations.

The paper is structured as follows. Following on from the introduction, the second

section examines Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. An overview of the methodology

underlying this paper forms the basis of the third section. The fourth section discusses the

empirical findings in the light of the conceptual framework developed in the literature review.

Finally, the conclusion is an opportunity to come back to the status of silence in new work

practices.

Key aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology

Embodiment and expression

Merleau-Ponty’s work, concerned primarily with the notions of body, corporeity and

embodiment (Bonan, 2015; Dale, 2005; Küpers, 2014), has received a growing attention in the

field of organization studies (see for instance Dale, 2005; de Vaujany et al., 2018a, b; Küpers,

2014; Valtonen et al., 2017; Willems, 2018; Yakhlef, 2010). His phenomenology questions the

obviousness of perceptions and the instantaneity of our experiences in order to show the

essential mediation of embodiment, flesh and inter-corporeity underlying ideas of naturalityi

and taken-for-grantedness. The body is understood as the condition of our experience to the

world and its continuity. For Merleau-Ponty (1945, 1948, 1960, 1964), we live in and through

a phenomenological body in the sense that we are a continuous flow of sensations and

perceptions for ourselves. In turn, we feel mainly in the past: we do not know, we do not

6

perceive, but we mainly re-cognize and re-perceive forms, shapes, structures, gestures and

practices that we have ‘already’ felt (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 1960). Furthermore, according to

Merleau-Ponty (1964: 162):

‘there is an experience of the visible thing as pre-existing my vision, but this experience

is not a fusion, a coincidence: because my eyes which see, my hands which touch, can also be

seen and touched, because, therefore, in that sense they see and touch the visible, the tangible

from within, because our flesh covers and even envelops all the visible and tangible things that

nonetheless surrounds it, the world and I are within one another, and from the perciperer to the

percipi, there is no anteriority, there is simultaneity and even delay’.

This movement is neither purely internal nor external (these are categories that Merleau-

Ponty invites us to overcome); it is fully reversible. Drawing from the Husserlian example of

the two hands that touch each other, Merleau-Ponty (1960) stresses the fact that these two hands

are constitutive of a feeling of both touched and touching or the experience of feeling and felt.

In other words, while we think we are on one side or the other (touched or touching), we actually

are phenomenologically always in the middle (i.e. in what is expressed). This phenomenon is

at the heart of many reversibilities and chiasms (e.g. inside/outside, others/I, ego/alter ego,

past/present, etc.). We feel ourselves as individuals only through an experience of alterity: the

community is the place and mode of expression of these reversible ‘I’, ‘You’ and ‘We’. Bodily

movements, encounters and everyday activities lie at the heart of reversible experiences. The

content of expression is also essential. Expression is more than the emergence of meaning

(something ‘happens’); it is also and primarily a temporality. This happening was, is or will be

meaningful (an embodied perception can become or re-become visible and perceptible later).

7

From a phenomenological perspective, in order to apprehend an expression or a mode of

expression, one needs to be immersed in it, to share it and to live it.

For Merleau-Ponty (1945, 1948, 1964), visibilities and invisibilities are key dimensions

of our everyday activities and their chiasms. In order to perceive and act, we need to transform

a lot of invisibilities. As we cannot simultaneously face the innumerable sensations conveyed

through our embodied experience of the world, we need to put many other things aside. For

instance, to write these lines, we put aside the noise of the street, a pain somewhere in our body,

email and phone notifications, etc.ii According to Merleau-Ponty (1964), visibilities and

invisibilities are thus not the opposite of each other; invisibilities are the scaffolding of

visibilities and also often what could extend them. Time, which is seen by Merleau-Ponty

(2010) as the epitome of an institution, is the process through which visibilities and invisibilities

can be balanced out. In order to write, one needs to put aside both nostalgia (a disturbing past)

and anxiety (an impeding future) without remaining trapped in the present. These temporal and

sensorial invisibilities will then reinforce the visibility of one’s activities for oneself. The same

relation connects the concepts of continuity & discontinuity (Merleau-Ponty, 1964) and activity

& passivity (Merleau-Ponty, 2010); far from being oppositional, they interpenetrate each other.

From expression to institution: In and beyond silence as an event

How do we ‘order’ and organize continuities & discontinuities, visibilities &

invisibilities, and activities & passivities in our lives? In one of his key lectures at the Collège

de France, Merleau-Ponty (2010) returns to the notion of institution. He specifies that ‘by

institution, we were intending those events in an experience which endow the experience with

durable dimensions, in relation to which a whole series of other experiences will make sense,

will form a thinkable sequel or a history – or again the events which deposit a sense in me, not

8

just something as surviving or a residue, but as the call to follow, the demand of a future’

(foreword of Lefort, 2010, in Merleau-Ponty, 2010: ix)iii. An institution is thus something

happening steadily behind a set of events, a happening in the happenings. It is neither an

archetypal or modal duration nor the repeated aspects of all events; it is what happens in the

multiplicity of what happen(ed)(s).

The link is also clear with the three classical Merleau-Pontian chiasms aforementioned,

namely visibility-invisibility, continuity-discontinuity and activity-passivity. Visibility &

invisibility and continuity & discontinuity are not the opposite of each other in our everyday

activities or institutions, and the same goes for activity & passivity. Passivity-activity chiasms

pervade most ‘happenings’ and institutions. Merleau-Ponty (2010) draws a very interesting

parallel between this chiasm and the action of sleeping. One does not ‘decide’ to sleep; one

goes to sleep and tries to meet the phenomenon. Once ‘in’ (i.e. asleep), sleeping is not the

opposite of activity. Once asleep, we dream and can sometimes remember our dreams. At some

point, I will also wake up without ‘deciding’ itiv. As such, inside sleep, a kind of activity

different to the daily ones emerges, one that enables and makes even more visible the activities

of the day. Passivity is just the other face of activity. Clearly, the institutional layer of our lives

lies on the side of passivity (as defined here). Institutions make it possible to ‘act’; they lie at

the heart of what happens and what can happen, in the flow of our everyday activities. An

institution is thus a trans-temporal regime of activities-passivities, continuities-discontinuities

and visibilities-invisibilities.

Research method: The study of collaborative spaces

Introducing our empirical sites

9

MSv is a makerspace that opened in 2005 in the east of Paris in a former factory. It was

established following a riot in front of an artistic squat. Following growing pressure from the

local residents, the mayor decided to take measures to clean up the area by experimenting with

‘new places’ subsidized by the city. MS accepts both professional and non-professional artists

and provides them with several floors to practice their art. The ground floor is devoted to

fashion designers, actors and co-workers. The second floor is open to painters and sculptors.

The third floor is reserved for painters, photographers and hosts a silver jewellery workshop.

Finally, the fourth floor is dedicated to novelists. Makerspaces are Do It Yourself (DIY)-

oriented communities and spaces; they rely on a principle of mutual help (i.e. quid pro quo).

People share both a common place and a few tools, and help each other in different ways (see

Anderson, 2009; Lallement, 2015). Makers can be entrepreneurs, employees or just occasional

DIY enthusiasts.

Our research also involved visiting other types of collaborative spaces, including

hackerspaces, fab labs and coworking spaces. Hackerspaces are very close to makerspaces; one

difference (albeit not systematic) is the political orientation of hackerspaces. Hackers follow a

particular ethics (e.g. open knowledge) and as such, hackerspaces can host particularly engaged

activistsvi. Fab labs are part of a global network and operate under The Fab Charter. Fab labs

are makerspaces relying on a logic of open knowledge, which involves continuously

documenting creative and productive processes for the broader community. Finally, coworking

spaces, which are geared towards entrepreneurs, innovators, project managers and employees,

consist of shared spaces focused on mutual help and community building (Gandini, 2015;

Merkel, 2015; Garrett et al., 2017). The emergence of collaborative entrepreneurship is highly

visible in coworking spaces: mobile workers, remote workers and entrepreneurs often join

coworking spaces, incubators and accelerators to both manage their loneliness and form part of

an emotional community (see Spinuzzi, 2012).

10

Contextualising the research: Ethnographic style of investigation

Our research started with a series of visits and short stays (between half an hour and half

a day, either preceding or following each visit) in 87 collaborative spaces (68 visits in

coworking spaces and 19 in makerspaces, hackerspaces and fab labs) located in ten different

countries (Australia, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Japan, Portugal Singapore, Spain, United

Kingdom) (see the Appendix). These visits were an opportunity to meet freelancers,

entrepreneurs and project managers, to develop our understanding of new work practices (i.e.

collaborative entrepreneurship, mobility, freelancing, telework, etc.) and to experience different

modalities of collaborative work (as a growing phenomenon). These visits were very important

in providing a contextual understanding of the ways in which collaborative workspaces operate.

They also allowed us to appreciate some of the key differences between makerspaces and other

types of collaborative spaces. Furthermore, developing a basic understanding of the logic of

makerspaces (through visits and on-site discussions) made the start of our ethnographic

research smoother. Finally, through these visits, silence emerged as a key aspect of these new

ways of working and as such, informed our ethnographic inquiry. During our visits, we found

that silence was much more than a ‘rule’, a non-event or non-activity; it quickly appeared as a

paradox.

These visits were followed by an ethnographic research in a makerspace in Paris (with

a coworking space on the ground floor) called MS. Ethnographic research has a long history in

organisation and management studies, dating back to the early 20th century (Zickar and Carter,

2010). By adopting an ethnographic style of investigation, one can explore the complex, messy

and contested realities of organizations (Law, 2004) and thus produce rich accounts of

organizational realities. This research was an opportunity to explore further some of the ideas

11

and themes that emerged through our visits to collaborative spaces, notably the role of silence

in collaborative spaces. All the empirical data discussed in this paper come from the

ethnographic research conducted in MS. Before detailing our research process, it is important

to note that truthful to their ethos, all the collaborative spaces we visited were keen to welcome

us as researchers and as such, access has been particularly smooth.

The data collected during the ethnographic inquiry mainly consist of observations and

semi-structured interviews (See table 1). Most of the phases of observation took place on the

ground floor of MS. The first author of this paper was seated in the coworking area of the place,

and right in the perspective of the (only) entry point into MS. This was an opportunity to see

all the people coming in and out, how people negotiated their entry and also to socialize. There

were also several opportunities to move to the upper floors for coffee, lunch or other breaks.

Observations amount to nine half days within the makerspace (in particular on the first floor),

supplemented by three half days of observation of the vicinity of MS (cafés, neighbourhood

associations, etc.). The first author of this paper took notes of what happened around him and

ordered his notes at the end of each day.

Seven semi-structured interviews have complemented the phases of observation. The

topics covered concerned the daily life of MS. These interviews allowed us to gain a deeper

insight into the ways in which silence is articulated and understood by people interacting with

MS at different levels and to further explore the relation between silence and learning. Beyond

that, the first author of this paper had the opportunity to converse with members of the space;

this was also an opportunity to ‘feel’ when it was appropriate or not to break the silence (i.e. to

phenomenologically experience silence). Finally, photographs, archives and online resources

have been used in the early stages of the research in order to develop a better understanding of

some of the key issues connected to new collaborative spaces.

12

Type of data

Description Period of data collection

Participant observations Nine half days of observation

within the makerspace (in

particular on the first floor)

Three half days of observation of

the external environment (cafés,

neighbourhood associations)

2015 (January-July)

Semi-structured interviews Seven semi-structured interviews

(1 hour each):

- Two with staff members

(general manager and PR)

- Two with residents

- Three with neighbours:

two with members of an old local

association (very close to MS) and

one with a neighbour of MS

2015 (January-July)

Archives Internal (status of MS, internal

rules, leaflets, etc.) and external

(publications in journals and

magazines about MS)

2015

Online resources Blogs, social networks, websites,

fora about the environment, artistic

squats and the broader territory

2015

Photographs 500 internal and external pictures

of the place and the area around the

place

2015 (January-July)

Table 1: Ethnographic style of investigation in MS

Nothing happens, something happens in a makerspace in Paris

Contextualising noises and silence at MS

Artistic squats are both a model and a counter-model for MS, a source of inspiration

about what should be (and should not be) done. Prior to setting up MS, its founder spent a

considerable amount of time observing artistic squats. The majority of MS members, who are

visual artists, have experienced squats. With this in mind, the founder of MS explained that MS

is designed in such a way that it physically constrains and seeks to avoid ‘squat practices’:

“Visual artists are natural squatters. Every bit of space that can be squatted will be squatted.

13

We have to avoid doors. We need large plateaus”. Yet, MS reproduces the structure of squats,

notably visible through the presence of a doorman at the entrance of the place. The doorman is

here to both monitor who gets in and help visitors. One of the worst fears of the doormen and

the manager is to see the place become a squat again. As a result, each resident has been issued

a plastic member card that must be left by the doorman when entering MS. When MS closes

for the day, there should be no card left on the doorman’s desk (made visible to everyone).

Nobody is allowed to stay overnight at MS. Given that roughly 60% of the residents are on

benefits, there is little doubt that, without this system, it would happen. On one occasion, we

heard a phone conversation during which a member explained that he did not know where he

would spend the coming night. Structurally, MS is not nicely decorated like some fancy

coworking spaces, or even makerspaces, we visited; there is no table football, table tennis or a

lounge in MS. While MS is primarily geared toward creative work, it also organizes training in

management skills (e.g. sessions about business models, accounting, etc.).

Having experienced the culture of squats creates a particular relationship to the noise of

the street and to noises alien to creative activities in general. It produces a very specific

phenomenological body (Merleau-Ponty, 1945), extremely sensitized to unusual noises. For

former squatters, much brouhaha coming from the street or brutal noises within MS would

connote ideas of danger (either the police violently storming into the squat to evict its occupants

or dealers fighting for the territory of the squat and its market), perhaps reminiscing certain

lived experiences. In that sense, loud noises can thus be traumatic for some people ‘inside’. The

founder explained that “any noise can be frightening. One day, the rumor had it that the place

would be transformed into an art centre. They would be evicted. Most of these people are in

precarious situations. More than ever, any unusual noise frightens them”. Unusual noises can

be seen as a disruption in the daily flow of activities that give directions and meaning to the

work of the residents of MS. This particular relation to noises is not only very informative of

14

the historicity of the place and its occupants, but also of the conditions under which creation

and learning may happen at MS.

Rhythms, visibilities, silence and events at MS

Silence was expected in the vast majority of the places we visited and MS was no

exception. For the managers of these various places, silence was a requirement for collective

work. In an open or flexible space, phone calls, meetings and discussions need to be avoided

and confined to some specific times (e.g. tours and visits, collective events, FuckUp nights,

hold ups, networking sessions, workshops, etc.) and spaces (e.g. fabrication area, acoustic

booth, event room, meeting room, machine area, etc.). Maintaining silence was enacted as a

way to optimize both time and space. If users follow these rules, then there is no need for

individual offices or compartmentalisation, and therefore less room is required for the

coworking space, the makerspace, the hackerspace or the fab lab to operate. Some spaces thus

offered time periods without Wi-Fi to make it possible for people to disconnect electronically.

Yoga, sophrology, mindfulness or Tai Chi classes were also often silent or quiet times (beyond

the open space) available by several spaces we visited. Interestingly, silence was also presented

as a service offered by the manager of MS, an opportunity to disconnect; to be alone (yet

surrounded) and to take time to focus on a project or even oneself.

On the workers’ side, silence was described in our conversations as a way not to be

disturbed by other people (almost acting like an invisible protection) while also feeling other

members around (as opposed to feeling lonely at homevii). Clearly, they wanted to feel alone

together (Spinuzzi, 2012) and silence was a paradoxical infrastructure that could materialize

this possibility. Some people described silence as something shared, one member said “I can

share a long conversation, but I can also simply share silences”, thus hinting at the peculiar

15

expressivity of silence. Indeed, silence appeared as the locus of collective undertaking and

invisible attempts and trials to produce artistic visibilities. In his book Signes, Merleau-Ponty

(1960) observed (by means of a slow-motion picture) that Matisse would often move his hands

without touching his painting, and that paintbrushes would often move in extremely quick

virtual drawings before actually touching a canvas and drawing; only a part of the movement

actually touched the canvas. Most artists in MS were in the process of producing these

invisibilities wrapped by silence. They sat in front of their piece without ‘doing’ something,

feeling what has been or could be done, making gestures around their piece, or experimenting

a gesture on a smaller piece, all this producing a fascinating silence wrapping all the invisible

activities necessary for the production of visible activities (Merleau-Ponty, 1964).

On some other occasions, silence was described as something boring or hard to cope

with, especially when one receives great or very bad news to share, or simply feels bad. In this

case, silence was perceived as disciplining the space of MS and limiting possibilities (in the

sense of constraining actions). We sometimes saw people leaving their work desk to go to the

kitchen, around the coffee machine, or to the informal smoking area (i.e. in some liminal spaces)

and spend time there just to have an opportunity to break the silence and start a discussion.

More generally, we found four key events bounding and underlying silence at the heart

of the life of MS. These events are based on the observation of the main flow of activities

happening within the makerspace. These key events constitute happenings, references and

specific expressions (Hernes, 2014; Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2010; Schatzki, 2010). They are (1)

individual artistic projects, (2) floor collaborations, (3) training sessions and (4) lunch breaks.

They all serve very different purposes, both in the life of MS and in that of its residents. In

addition, each of these four main collective events is connected to one particular form of

learning.

16

Individuals are focused on their work project, its space and its temporality. The space

and the temporality of a given project can occasionally overflow the boundaries of MS. In this

context, silence prevails and workers may engage in ‘co-created situated learning’ (see Butcher,

2018); they share a silence that provides the conditions for them to apprentice their

craftsmanship (through both reflexive phases and silent observations of fellow residents). Floor

collaborations are episodic and more or less improvised; they happen through random

encounters or when someone asks a question and then a conversation ensues. They foster what

we call ‘bilateral or interpersonal learning’: there is an exchange of ideas and practices

connected to the respective projects of the interlocutors. Training sessions take place on the

ground floor around circular tables. They last a couple of hours and resemble ‘academic

sessions’: they are clearly bounded in time and space and mainly involve people external to the

space. Their formal structure enables a form of ‘technical learning’ – learning is unidirectional

and strongly formatted and regimented by the codes of training sessions. Finally, lunch breaks

constitute a space and time of convergence and as such, the most communal event for the

residents of MS. Lunch is also an opportunity to make visible and to remind the collective

orientation of MS and its artistic life. This amounts to a form of social learning.

Altogether, this produces a continuous movement ‘inside’ MS with people constantly

‘in action’. Most of the expressivity of gestures and movements (Merleau-Ponty, 1964) is thus

about activity and creativity. The place is not expected to be a bubble for disconnection in the

creative process or a context for entertainment and escape. Most breaks (e.g. for discussions)

we attended took place outside the creative realm of MS (e.g. in the kitchen, in the corridors, in

the internal court, on the terrace or in front of the building). Clearly, these spaces play a role in

the continuous flow of creativity and associated practice of learning that give directions to the

actions of MS. Furthermore, they can be seen as an extension of the embodied practices of

17

workers, a necessary moment in time in order to make visible certain invisibilities and invisible

other practices.

These different events may occasionally clash. The noise and movements connected to

those involved in training sessions can, for instance, disturb people in the dressmaking

workshop. Noises related to collaborative activities can be distracting and break other

individual and collective events. Another example is how artistic activities can bother

immediate neighbours (because of the smell, the dirty traces, the noise of some tools, etc.). As

such, one form of learning and creating may jeopardize the conditions of success of another. In

terms of the temporal and spatial cohabitation of all human activities, multiple mediations are

particularly needed in order to build a paradoxical legitimation of these punctual disharmonies.

The table below (Table 2) presents these four events through their spatial and temporal

relationships to noise and their connected learning processes.

Event I:

Individual

artistic project

Event II:

Floor

collaboration

Event III:

Training

sessions

Event IV:

Lunch breaks

Spatial context Immobile. In the

creative areas and

rooms, on the

floors.

Mainly in liminal

times and spaces

(corridors, stairs,

conversations in

movement, etc.)

On the ground

floor, close to the

coworking space.

Visible from the

entrance.

In the kitchen

inside, in private

apartments or

(more rarely

because of the

price) in bistros

around the place.

Temporal

orientation

Fragmented.

Fabricating the

Ephemeral, fragile

collaborations

Intense moment

between

Intense moment of

conversations that

18

piece of art takes

time. Sometimes,

people also work at

home.

between people

who will probably

meet again.

participants who

will probably never

meet again and

who mix with local

members on a

weekly basis.

can be interrupted

and resumed later.

Relationship

with noise

Silent time. Strong

focus. Also avoid

disrupting visually

and aurally other

people.

Noisy time, but

contained by

liminality and/or

movement (walked

conversation)

Noisy moment in

an open context

(the ground floor

with the often

empty coworking

space connoting

business)

Noisy moment

contained by a

room and a

particular time of

the day (lunch

break) making

noise non-

disruptive.

Learning Co-created situated

learning

Bilateral/Inter-

personal learning

‘Technical’

learning

Social learning

Table 2: Four key events at MS and their relationship with noise and silence

Silence as a central institution and a meta-event: From chiasm to institution

Within MS, we observed several key discontinuities in the continuous process of

maintaining silence by coworkers, designers (on the ground floor) and painters (upstairs). For

members, one key interruption is when people would enter or leave the space and simply say

hello or goodbye. This was seen as a legitimate noisy practice in the open space. Surprisingly,

giving or receiving a phone call was another one. We thus often observed people answering

phone calls, standing up, and leaving the space while walking in the direction of a liminal area

(e.g. a phone booth, the stairs, the internal court, the street, etc.). A relaxed posture, eyes not

staring at the screen of the laptop or a document, a particular body signal (a simple hello) were

also other contexts of (often short) conversations with desk neighbours. These were only

possible if the neighbour also sent signals of openness to a conversation. Other opportunities to

break a silence included the introduction of a newcomer (with close interests, projects or skills),

19

tours, visits or unexpected events (e.g. a printer is not working and users require some help).

But surprisingly, in places where mutual help, gifts and counter-gifts are expected to be strongly

present, silence (as a social process) was quite continuous at MS (and other collaborative spaces

we observed) in the dominant time-spaces constituted by everyday activities (which does not

mean that we did not find them elsewhere in more liminal time-spaces). Besides, collective

events (e.g. a cocktail on the ground floor) and liminal times and spaces (e.g. coffee breaks,

smoking breaks, etc.) were opportunities for intense and often rich conversations (practice and

advice sharing, news and rumour, more extended introductions, etc.).

For painters or other makers at MS, silence was less obvious since their activities and

tools would create more noise than those of coworkers. That said, conversations were quite

rare. While people might be interrupted by a goodbye or a hello, we noticed that people leaving

took care not to interrupt or bother other painters during a key activity. We thus saw people

hesitating and realizing that it was not the right time to leave, quickly changing their trajectory

not to create a sense of obligation to interact. Continuities and discontinuities in gestures and

movements were thus tightly related to visibility-invisibility loops and their maintenance

(Merleau-Ponty, 1964). Advice and sharing of tools and materials could also be another reason

to interrupt silence. This was notably the case when one needed a material that was missing

(e.g. paint, brush or other tools) or noticed something wrong in the practice of a younger or less

experienced painter in the place. Strangely (at least for the non-painters we are), we rarely saw

(maybe a longer study would have made it visible) people complimenting each other or

evaluating other people’s work; we did hear compliments being made in the kitchen but nothing

in the main room where the main creative activities occur. Finally, phone calls and collective

events were also part of major interruptions of silence for makers.

Behind the shared silence of MS, in the flow of an activity shared with other people,

breaking silence could be a way to extend another continuity: feeling part of the ‘becoming of

20

society’, getting a sense of ‘togetherness’ and community, and inscribing oneself in a flow of

activities that overtakes one’s own bubble. For instance, we witnessed a case that made the

presence of silence as an institution more visible. A silkscreen printer, located on the ground

floor, had been going through a tough period for several months. It had become almost

impossible for him to sell his cards and posters. One day, three interns from the fashion

workshop (on the same floor) came close to him to cut pieces of fabric. Suddenly, he stood up,

moved towards the big printers and produced a set of posters. Will he sell them? Probably not.

Will he learn or test something new through this process? Probably not. But this is obviously

not what was at stake. What was at stake for him was to share a legitimate movement, engaging

with others (i.e. being part of this movement of activity), sharing the rhythm of the place,

accompanying the sequences of other people’s work, constructing an affective relationship in

the moment. It was an endogenous process, a co-construction, a shared feeling between the

silkscreen printer and the three interns. It represented something they experienced together, or

rather, the silkscreen printer experienced it as something that they shared together as the three

interns were part of the engagement and pursued it. The three interns and the silkscreen printer

did not decide to comply with each other or with a set of rules; they simply behaved collectively

in a way they experienced and felt at that moment.

Interestingly, we noticed that silence was at the heart of numerous opportunities for

encounters and learning (work discontinuities), or contrariwise, strategies to avoid encounters

(work continuities). This was particularly true for painters. Body postures, immobility and the

position of trestles were sometimes meant to create lasting bubbles of silence. Some artists were

thus involved in gestures far from the eyes they could cross or stare at (those of people coming

close to them). This was a way to create some focus on gesture itself, being at the heart of

reversibility (Merleau-Ponty, 1945). In contrast, other artists would put their trestles close to

entry points or liminal spaces, be much more mobile and open to cross other people’s gaze. For

21

instance, we observed a writer setting up an improvised office in the kitchen and a draftsman

locating his trestle in the painters’ area. These two people deliberately looked for a provisional

openness in their work process, probably for both emotional and work-related reasons. They

were looking for discussions, encounters and advice. People involved in such spatial openness

were sometimes stuck in critical processes and problems relating to their paintings and simply

looking for solutions, or were close to the end of their piece and wanted to share an emotion

which could be a source of learning for other people and for themselves.

Most people at MS worked on their craft and learned their art beyond the time-space of

MS. These discontinuities were paradoxically a way to extend and continue the creative and

learning process, enriching it with new times, new inspirations, new associations and new

contexts. Continuities and discontinuities could also be seen in a more chiasmic way for those

mainly working outside (e.g. in a workshop or in their apartment) and coming episodically to

MS. For them, coming to MS was a way to break the silence that they may already be facing in

their apartments or workshops. This was the case for some professional artists, but also for

retired ladies (fondly called ‘the grannies’ by other residents) or for ‘slashers’ involved in other

artistic activities than their art in order to survive. For many of them, MS was a landmark and

a ‘centre’. For instance, the founder explained: “For people here, MS is an anchorage point.

They come back from one year to another. The average stay is quite long. They also anchor

here psychologically. This makes it possible for them to have a center in their trajectory. They

disappear six months and they come back….when they have a problem.”. For one person we

met, we even wondered whether art was not simply a pretext to break loneliness and to create

one-off conversations. He explained, “I come here almost everyday. I’m part of the landscape.

I like to talk to people here”. Similarly, some people moved from one floor (and universe) to

another to have a chat with other people. The discontinuous noise of episodic conversations

was thus the heart of a sociality, the opposite of the emptiness of their life outside made of

22

continuous silence at home. At some point, we realized that we did not even care anymore about

these whispered conversations, this discontinuous music with its melodies, which had become

part of our silence.

Silence as embodied learning and working

During our research at MS, our attention was captured by the complexity of silence and

by the fact that silence was far from being something passive, invisible and continuous

(Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 2010). First of all, the presence and maintenance of silence required a

lot of activities and mediations. Some of these mediations include the use of headphones, the

choice and continuous adaptation of a body posture (to avoid staring into the eyes of other

people and to avoid adopting a body position that would suggest that one is open to social

interactions), movements (such as the practice of walking that could also be a way to create a

bubble to disconnect from the outside world), retreats in liminal spaces (such as cabin booth,

stairs, street, internal courts), the paradoxical use of white noises or music (through headphone)

or the choice of a location close to a machine producing a continuous noise. Producing and

maintaining silence thus required a learning process that also applied to us (used to work in

closed offices and more synchronic environments).

Silence was thus not just a form of passivity: it was often a kind of pre-reflexive context

helping an individual or even a group activity to be more focused and more active. Silence was

not an invisibility: people were often aware of its existence and were searching and cultivating

it to make more visible for themselves what they were doing (i.e. the noise of their own

activities). Finally, silence was not at all a continuity: silence was frequently interrupted by

micro-noises and sounds in the space, contained a lot of small noisesviii. Interestingly, silence

was then at the heart of numerous paradoxes. Silence did not mean the absence of noises.

23

Silence could mean more quietness, focus, embodied learning, with noises covering other

noises (with music or white sounds) or noises ignored through habits (people simply get

accustomed to some noises and ignore them). Strangely, a collective silence of 50 people seated

and working could fill the atmosphere more than 50 people talking loudly and inter-individually

in the same place.

The four events identified at MS, as well as their relationship to silence and learning,

are particularly interesting with regards to the notion of ‘institution’ in Merleau-Ponty’s (2010)

writings. An institution is what is likely to give meaning, direction and synchrony to a set of

events. It is a durable property of events, what is happening in each happening, the enduring

part of the past and future in each and between presents. Through our research, silence has

emerged as a pivotal institution at the heart of many visibilities-invisibilities, continuities-

discontinuities and passivities-activities that underlie new work practices (coworking, mobility,

remote work, telework, etc.). Silence is always there, in the sounds, in the noise between and

inside all activities, at the heart of all the quietness necessary for work activities and learning,

and in the four main events we identified, far from the simple opposite of noise and much more

than a discontinuity. Silence is a highly temporal ‘institution’. It gives a sense of the

continuities-discontinuities of work, a sense of the duration of work (a long period of silence is

expected to be a long period of work), the rhythm and typical tempo of a day of work. Silence

preceding an event orders it and makes the event different than if everybody had already had

the opportunity to meet and chat all day long. The event becomes more desired and more

meaningful.

Aside from temporalizing new work practices, silence plays a role in a process of

embodied learning (Blackman and Sadler-Smith, 2009). The realm of silence is not devoid of

discoveries, apprenticeship or intuitions. By creating bubbles, silence provides the conditions

of experience in which one can genuinely focus on what is being done and how it is being done.

24

Through silence, one can not only inhabit one’s gestures but also feel other people’s gestures

and movements. In that sense, it is a prelude to other events (other learning processes, noisy

moments of collective reflexivity, etc.). Silence prepares true and deep interactions with other

people, and the embodied process of learning that will ensue. It is an important aspect of the

embodied experience of work (Willems, 2018), something that requires a specific learning

process (coming from another work environment made us aware of it). Silence is a deep and

emergent condition of possibility of learning for painters, sculptors, writers and players of the

maker space. In that sense, learning is ‘corporeal, pre-discursive and pre-social, stemming from

the body’s perpetual need to cope with tensions arising in the body-environment connections.’

(Yakhlef, 2010: 409). Ultimately, silence is the very transcendence that makes learning possible

in the process of artistic creation.

Through this prism of silence as an active, experiential, embodied and political

accomplishment, learning emerges as a set of gestures and embodied practices that lie at the

heart of a ‘felt solidarity’ (see Mazis, 2016). Silence makes obvious the fact that we never learn

alone, as a sum of individual, bounded bodies and mediations. Alterity is at the heart of learning,

it gives a depth to the process of learning, it makes it possible as a felt becoming through which

we can collectively and ethically reflect upon what we do.

Conclusion: makers and entrepreneurs in search of silence, in search through silence

Throughout this paper, we sought to rethink the notion of silence in the context of new

ways of working. Our primary concern was to investigate the relationship between silence and

learning; this entailed exploring alternative ways of expressing the notion of silence, that is to

say moving away from narratives that simply portray silence as an absence, a lack of or even a

non-existence. By engaging with the work of the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty, we

25

developed a more comprehensive and phenomenological conceptual framework around the

notion of silence through which we can highlight both the wealth of interventions, mediations

and effort required to perform silence in these new work places and the pivotal role played by

silence with regards to the actualisation, temporalization embodiment and apprenticeship of

new work practices. Silence is more than ever a fight, a rupture, and an escape. It is a violence

covering and containing poverty. It is sometimes a cry expressing it. Most of all, silence is also

and paradoxically the necessary time-space for reflexion, learning, emancipation and the

emergence of various creative and entrepreneurial endeavours. It is an institution in Merleau-

Ponty’s (2010) sense, something generating temporality and ordering collective activity.

Silence is also something entrepreneurs, mobile workers, remote workers, activists, artists and

all citizens alike need more and more in the tumult of our cities.

Funding acknowledgment

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or

not-for-profit sectors.

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APPENDIX

List of collaborative spaces visited between 2014 and 2017 by the first author

Name of space City Type of space

MS Paris Hybrid (makerspace and

coworking)

Agora Collective Berlin Coworking

Almogavers Business

Factory

Barcelona Coworking and incubator

Anahoy Berlin Coworking

Atelier des Médias Lyon Coworking

Beeotop Clichy Coworking

Betahaus Barcelona Coworking

Betahaus Berlin Coworking

Blue Chili Sydney Coworking

Bond Collective New York Coworking

C-base Berlin Hackerspace

Canodrom Barcelona Coworking and incubator

Carrefour Numérique Paris Fab lab

Casaco Paris Coworking

Collective work Singapore Coworking

Coworking BGE Paris Coworking

Coworking Lille Lille Coworking

Coworking Republic Paris Coworking

Coworklisboa Lisbon Coworking

Coworkshop Paris Coworking

Craft Paris Coworking

Creatis Paris Hybrid space: Coworking,

‘cultural entrepreneur

residence’ and incubator

DMM Tokyo Makerspace

Dojo Crea Paris Coworking

Ecoworking Lyon Coworking

E-garage (ESADE) Barcelona Coworking

Electrolab Paris Hackerspace and fab lab

Engine Room Sydney Coworking

ENSAD Paris University

FabCafé Tokyo Fab lab

Fab lab Berlin Berlin Fab lab

Fab lab Singapore Singapore Fab lab

Fontaines O Livres Paris Coworking

Hamelaha Workshop Tel Aviv Makerspace

32

Hangar.org Barcelona Artistic makerspace

Hack Manhattan New York Hackerspace

Ici Montreuil Montreuil Hybrid space

(makerspace, but also

coworking space)

Impact Hub London London Coworking

Impact Hub Singapore Singapore Coworking

IPSOS Paris Corporate innovative

workplace

Kwerk Boulogne-

Billancourt

Coworking

Kwerk Paris Coworking

L’Archipel Paris Coworking (of solidarity)

L’Atelier fil rouge Paris Coworking

La Commune Paris Association

La Cordée Lyon Coworking

La Cordée Paris Paris Coworking

La Fabrique des Objets

libres

Lyon Fab lab

La Mutinerie (ville) Paris Coworking

La Ruche Paris Coworking

Labo de l’édition Paris Coworking, incubator and

events

Le 10h10 Paris Coworking coffee

L’Établisienne Paris Coworking

Le Gymnase Paris Coworking

Le Mixer - UNIBAIL-

RODAMCO

Paris Corporate and closed

coworking

Le Tank Paris Coworking

Liberté Living Lab Paris Hybrid space (civic tech,

coworking, cultural

events)

LODGE Tokyo Coworking

LX factory Lisbon Makerspace and maker

area

Makers of Barcelona Barcelona Makerspace

Marketing space Paris Coworking and creativity

studios

Mon atelier en ville Paris Coworking

MyCowork Paris Coworking

Nexity Blue Office Issy-Les-

Moulineaux

Coworking

Nextdoor Paris Coworking

Nextdoor Défense Paris Coworking

Noisebridge San Francisco Hackerspace

Numa Paris Coworking

Old Trampery London Coworking

Player - (LLL prototype) Paris Corporate coworking

PSL-Lab Paris Coworking

Santz Oberholz Berlin Coworking

33

Servcorp Singapore Hybrid (coworking and

business centre)

Soleilles Paris Coworking

SMU Lab Singapore Makerspace

Solidifier Sydney Makerspace

Spaces Paris Coworking

Stone & Chalk Sydney Coworking

Stone soup Athens Coworking

The Hoxton Mix London Coworking

Urban Nation Berlin Artistic makerspaces

Ventura Sydney Coworking

Villa Bonne Nouvelle -

ORANGE

Paris Corporate and semi-open

coworking

Village London London Coworking

Volumes Paris Coworking

WeWork Paris Paris Coworking

WeWork Berlin Berlin Coworking

Worklab (aux Grands

Voisins) LBMG

Paris Corporate and semi-open

coworking

i For Merleau-Ponty (1960, 2010), nature is not a virgin world expecting human transformation

and appropriation. Nature is the legitimation and legitimate flow of our life, what we do not

even ‘see’ but that which is at the heart of our visible life.

ii Merleau-Ponty died the year before the publication of Austin’s (1962) seminal book on

performativity. Nonetheless, Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of visibility and invisibility present

similarities to Austin’s work, and even to the later temporal view of performativity elaborated

by Barad (2007). The visibility-invisibility loop is a condition of possibility of action that

emerges in the flow of action itself (it is not a transcendental process as defended by Kantian

views).

iii We see some similarities to Ricoeur’s (1985) work on narratives and time. Interestingly

though, Ricoeur barely quotes Merleau-Ponty (except on pages 41, 57, 415 and 416).

iv I can delegate this task to an alarm clock. But even if I set it up myself, phenomenologically,

in my present, it will not be a decision I made.

v This is a fictional name that will be used throughout the paper.

34

vi This stance has been questioned by recent research that highlights the prevalence of the

‘community-orientation’ of the hacker movement over its political engagement (see Davies,

2017).

vii Silence was then an opportunity for a ‘felt solidarity’ between entrepreneurs (Mazis, 2016).

viii We never found a fully silent space. Hosted activities always produce a minimum of noise.

Phenomenologically, even in places where no ‘external’ noises could be identified, we were

surprised to hear all the noises produced by our own body (breath, stomach, pulse, body

movements, etc.); full silence would be death.